(March 14, 2021 / JNS) Two events of religious and historical significance that very nearly took place last week point to a deeper layer in Jordan and Saudi Arabia’s struggle for guardianship of Islamic holy places on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Israel has now been dragged into this struggle against its will.

Jordanian Crown Prince Hussein, King Abdullah’s son, was about to enter the gates of the Temple Mount on March 10 to perpetuate Jordan’s formal status as the Muslim world’s guardian of the site. However, the visit was canceled at the last minute, supposedly due to a “disagreement over security arrangements.” From the Jordanians’ perspective, this public flag-raising was urgently necessary given the unrefuted reports that another crown prince, from Riyadh, was engaged in negotiations with Israel on whether to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When it comes to talks with the Saudis, the Temple Mount is also a priority.

As an Islamic power that already controls Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam, Saudi Arabia has shown increasing interest in gaining a significant foothold at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. Riyadh is looking to create a new status quo at the site and is willing to invest tens of billions of dollars in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and agree to some form of normalization of ties with Israel to this end.

Jordan, for its part, is furious at the very notion Saudi Arabia could be given a role at the site. The Hashemite dynasty lost its role as the keeper of Islam’s holy sites in Mecca and Medina after World War I. Secondary guardianship over Islam’s holy sites in Jerusalem was its consolation prize. This status was also reserved for Jordan within the framework of its ties with Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War.

Jordan continued to be involved in the religious management of the mount through the Jordanian Wakf. It earned recognition for its senior status on the mount through the framework of the peace treaty signed with Israel in 1994 and its active and opinionated involvement in a series of issues concerning the site, from the renovation of walls and joint exercises with Israeli rescue forces on the mount to a veto on Israeli plans for the area around the Temple Mount, including the replacement of the Mughrabi Bridge and the removal of construction debris from the “Little Western Wall.”

When then-Saudi King Khaled dispatched emissaries in the 1980s to offer Prime Minister Menachem Begin a fortune for the development of a new Middle East in return for a Saudi flag being installed on the Temple Mount, Begin responded by kicking them out. Things have changed. Netanyahu and his officials are involved in talks on the possibility of affording Riyadh status on the site. This began when plans were being made for former U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” and continues to this very day.

Israel has become a kind of traffic cop on the mount. It tries, sometimes unsuccessfully, to look out for its own status as a sovereign, while at the same time regulating the opposing interests of various Arab and Muslim figures.

For Jordan, which affords us a quiet eastern border and extensive bilateral economic and security ties, the mount isn’t just a historical symbol but the anchor that guarantees the stability of the kingdom’s rule; a rule against which radical Islamic forces often rise. And so, Israel finds itself straddling the divide, maneuvering in the inter-Islamic struggle between Amman and Riyadh, sometimes acting to please the Jordanians, at other times, looking to please the Saudis.

Until the time comes when another decision is required—and that day may be soon approaching—Jordan is still Israel’s preferred partner on the Temple Mount. This remains the case even though Amman needs Israel no less and maybe even more than Israel needs Amman.

Nadav Shragai is a veteran Israeli journalist.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/israel-straddles-the-divide-as-saudis-vie-for-influence-over-temple-mount/

The post Israel straddles the divide as Saudis vie for influence over Temple Mount first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

As Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) has terrorized his opponents at home and abroad, fear has spread within the Saudi kingdom. Has he become the new Saddam of Arabia? As Iraq’s Saddam Hussein did in the 1980s, MbS is cementing his power domestically and regionally through fear and economic largesse under the guise of fighting Iran, Islamic radicalism, and terrorism.

Much like the tyrant of Baghdad did in Iraq, MbS has crushed his domestic and regional opponents. Both of them have enlisted the support of foreign powers, especially the United States and Britain, to buttress their hold on power in their territories and expand their reach internationally. They both spoke the language of “reform,” which appeals to Western audiences, and both demonized Iran as a promoter of regional instability and a source of evil internationally.

They both used chemical weapons against their opponents—Saddam against his Kurdish citizens and against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war; MbS against civilians in Yemen. Saddam threatened and later invaded his neighbor Kuwait. MbS has waged a vicious campaign against his neighbor and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member Qatar and threatened to invade it.

Saddam and MbS also cynically donned the mantle of Sunni Islam in their hypocritical claims against the so-called Shia Crescent and its main proponent Iran. Saddam’s “Republic of Fear” seems to be slowly morphing into a “Kingdom of Fear” under MbS.

In his “city-busting” campaign during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam committed horrible atrocities against civilians in Iranian cities in the 1980s. Thirty years later, MbS is committing equally horrible crimes against innocent civilians in Yemen. The famine and starvation that MbS’s war has wrought on Yemeni children is arguably more calamitous than what Saddam did in Iran. Sadly, both Saddam and MbS have relied on American military, intelligence, and political support in the execution of their bloody wars.

Saddam killed thousands of people and arrested and executed hundreds of his opponents, including journalists, academics, and peaceful dissidents. MbS has used the same playbook. The “premeditated murder” of Jamal Khashoggi—a Saudi citizen, a U.S. permanent resident, and a Washington Post journalist—starkly illustrates MbS’s campaign against his critics.

Both autocrats used their foreign ministers to weave a pro-regime narrative, mainly for Western audiences, to exonerate their rulers from the war crimes they committed. Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister, regaled Western media with his outlandish interviews about Saddam and his service to the West in fighting Iran and Islamic radicalism. Adel al-Jubeir, MbS’s foreign minister, has given frequent interviews presenting the war in Yemen as a Saudi defensive action against “evil” Iran and minimizing the horrible human tragedy that Saudi airstrikes have caused. Only a few days ago, al-Jubeir described the global reaction to the Saudi murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul as “hysteria.”

Several examples highlight Mohammad bin Salman’s dystopian decent into bloody autocracy and regional chaos.

The Iran War

Saddam Hussein, the late tyrant of Iraq, went to war against Iran in September 1980 on the claim that he was protecting the Sunni Arab states against Shia Iran. He was supported by the Arab states of the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and its neighboring family-ruled emirates, on the grounds that the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran under the ayatollahs’ theocratic rule planned to export its revolution to the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf to topple the tribal regimes in the Gulf Arab emirates. Except for Syria, most Sunni Arab states supported Saddam’s war against Iran.

Saddam’s dream of defeating the “Persian menace” next door faded quickly following the defeat of his forces on al-Fao peninsula on the southern tip of Iraq. The casualties of his poorly trained soldiers began to mount, and the specter of losing the war loomed large. Recognizing this reality, the United States decided to supply Saddam with intelligence and military support. Washington’s decision was driven not by love for Saddam but by the painful memory of the hostage crisis and Iran’s newly found sense of empowerment in the Gulf region and beyond. American support for the five-year duration of the war after Fao was pivotal in Iran not winning the war and Saddam’s not losing it. Over one million Iraqis and Iranians died during that war, which lasted for most of the 1980s.

Aside from his hatred for Shia Iran, Saddam went to war to force the new regime to abrogate the Shatt al-Arab treaty, which he felt he was forced to sign with the shah of Iran in Algiers in 1975. The treaty gave Iran the right to pass through the Shatt al-Arab estuary to reach Abadan, Iran’s major oil city. Saddam correctly believed at the time that by signing the treaty, the shah-supported Kurdish rebellion in the north would end. It did. In return, Saddam expelled Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the “cassette” revolution against the shah from southern Iraq, from the country. Khomeini continued his anti-shah movement from France.

During the war, Saddam persecuted and terrified his Shia population, and right after the war, he gassed Iraqi Kurds in the Iraqi town of Halabja. Also, following the war when oil-rich Gulf Arab states refused to pay Saddam billions of dollars to shore up his depleted budget, he invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Once this happened, Washington put Saddam in the cross hairs.

Upon his appointment by his ailing king as Saudi Arabia’s minister of defense, the 31-year-old MbS started his war in Yemen against the Houthis, which has presumably been conducted by a Saudi-led Sunni Arab coalition in which Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates assumed a pivotal role. Like Saddam before him, MbS has used the Iran “menace” to justify a war against a neighbor. In addition to the Sunni Arab states, MbS has received tacit and explicit support from Israel and the United States. Washington has extended a vast array of intelligence and tactical support in its prosecution of the war, including weapons that have left thousands of Yemenis homeless, hungry, and destitute.

Airstrikes have caused untold misery and death, without much concern in the West other than from human rights organizations. Western leaders, much as they did during the Iran-Iraq war, have paid lip service to the Yemeni human tragedy without holding MbS accountable for this arguably illegal war. A few days ago, the Independent reported that the death toll in the Yemen war could be “five times higher than we think.” It’s time for the international community to take responsibility for the human disaster that the Saudi-led war has created in Yemen.  Washington should halt its weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and should hold MbS responsible for the war crimes he is committing in Yemen.

In pursuing the war in Yemen, MbS, much like Saddam, also harbors territorial interests. He wanted to control access to the Bab al-Mandab between the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, which also connects with the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea on the other end of the Red Sea. When MbS offered billions of dollars to Egypt’s strongman Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to shore up the Egyptian economy, Sisi gave him Sanafir and Tiran, two strategically located islands in the Red Sea. MbS’s ambition seems to establish Saudi Arabia as the preponderant power in the Arabian Peninsula as a countervailing force to Iran.

Kuwait and Qatar

Two years following his disastrous war with Iran, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, ostensibly to reclaim it as Iraqi territory. Although some Iraqi government officials have at different times referred to Kuwait as the nineteenth province of Iraq, Saddam’s invasion was driven by his anger at the emirate’s refusal to forgive the billions of dollars in debts that Iraq owed Kuwait for the loans it received during the war. Saddam arrogantly believed that his war against Iran helped save Kuwait and other emirates from Iran. Of course, the American-led coalition declared war on Saddam and forced him to leave the “nineteenth province” 100 hours after the start of the war.

MbS’s hostility toward Qatar, which has been driven by the Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani’s independent streak toward Saudi Arabia and his lukewarm support for MbS’s adventurism in Yemen and bellicose rhetoric toward Iran, led him to declare an illegal siege on Qatar, a fellow member in the GCC. He closed the Qatari-Saudi border and halted all trade with Qatar, which had previously imported most of its food stuffs over land via Saudi Arabia. MbS intended to starve the Qatari people, forcing them to rise up against their ruler. This deadly, childish game of blockade and severing of diplomatic relations—which Bahrain, the UAE, and Egypt supported—has failed to cow Tamim into submission. Tamim has survived MbS’s plotting, developed new trade routes, and remained an independent player in the region.

During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam dried up the marches in southern Iraq to force the Shia into submission. MbS is now trying to dig a trench between Saudi Arabia and Qatar to alter the emirate’s geography from an island into a peninsula, thereby further isolating it. The marches are back brimming with wild life, and Saddam failed to subdue Iraqi Shia. The wasteful trench project will equally fail to force the Qatari ruler into submission. The animus that Saddam exhibited toward Kuwait on the eve of the invasion in 1990 and the bellicosity MbS displayed toward Qatar differ little in the geopolitics of the Middle East. The difference is that Saddam invaded Kuwait while the United States and others strongly advised MbS against invading Qatar.

Saddam’s arrogance of power and obsession with regional leadership led him to pursue military adventurism in the neighborhood, which brought disaster to him and his country. In pursuing similar policies, will MbS face the same fate?

The post MbS: The New Saddam Of Arabia? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A composite image of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Associated Press/Virginia Mayo; Nicolas Asfouri – Pool/Getty

• The killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi could potentially lead to charges against Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman under international law.
• But experts say that would never happen without an independent investigation.
• Sherine Tadros, head of the UN office for Amnesty International in New York, says the UN needs to head an independent investigation into Khashoggi’s death.
• But even if an independent investigation was carried out, experts say Saudi Arabia would work to ensure he wouldn’t face any consequences.

The troubling killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi could potentially lead to charges against Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman under international law, experts say, if an independent investigation is carried out.

But experts say Saudi Arabia would work to ensure no matter what that he wouldn’t face any consequences.

Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post and was often critical of the Saudi government, disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

After weeks of denials, the Saudis acknowledged he was killed in the consulate. The Saudis have since acknowledged that Khashoggi’s killing was “likely” premeditated but have attempted to distance the crown prince from the incident.

But multiple accounts have suggested that the crown prince, informally referred to as MBS, orchestrated the events that led to Khashoggi’s killing. Khashoggi was reportedly killed in a brutal fashion that involved torture, and reports indicate his body was dismembered.

Some believe MBS could, and should, possibly face justice in civil and criminal courts.

‘The acts against Mr. Khashoggi are serious violations of international human rights law’

Stephen Rapp, the former US State Department ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, recently told The Washington Post that the killing amounted to “serious violations of international human rights law, including the law to protect the individual from torture and forced disappearance.”

International law and precedent could allow prosecutors in several countries to bring charges against MBS, and Khashoggi’s family could also potentially bring a case against him in civil courts, Rapp told The Post.

For example, the UN Convention against Torture, of which Saudi Arabia is a signatory, could pave the way for charges to be brought against MBS or other Saudi officials.

Countries that are signatories of the convention, via the principal of universal jurisdiction, could refer a case to the International Court of Justice, or ICJ. The court could pursue an order for Saudi Arabia to prosecute or extradite MBS and the other officials suspected of being involved, Rapp said.

Rapp also said that even if MBS didn’t know about the operation, as the Saudis have claimed, he could still be viewed as culpable under US and international law due to what’s known as “command responsibility,” because of his authority and responsibility over those involved.

But not all legal experts are convinced such scenarios are realistic.

‘The Saudis will never go along’

Bradley P. Moss, a Washington, DC-based lawyer specializing in national security, said the possibilities outlined by Rapp could be done “in theory.”

“Realistically speaking, however, virtually none of these options will be likely to come to fruition absent significant pressure from the US (and President Trump in particular),” Moss told Business Insider.

Moss said there’s no reason to believe the Saudis would allow MBS to be extradited to face justice on the international level or in Turkey, where the killing occurred.

 Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

“The ability to prosecute someone of MBS’ level of seniority and authority is contingent on the approval of that person’s country, and the Saudis will never go along with that idea voluntarily,” Moss added.

But Moss did say that if global arrest warrants are issued for MBS, he could be “largely confined to Saudi Arabia for many years for fear of extradition.”

“It may be that MBS personally faces sanctions of some kind by the United States and other countries, and that Saudi Arabia as a country faces some political and financial pressure for a few years,” Moss said. “That is likely to be the extent of what occurs though.”

‘The first step of course is an actual credible investigation’

Sherine Tadros, head of the UN office for Amnesty International in New York, says the UN needs to head an independent investigation into Khashoggi’s death before discussing potential charges against MBS or other Saudi officials.

There are two current investigations into Khashoggi’s killing: one by the Turkish government and the other by the Saudi government. Neither have been particularly transparent, and many of the reports surrounding Khashoggi’s death have been based on leaks from Turkish officials.

“What we have are two so-called investigations,” Tadros told Business Insider.

“The Saudis keep changing their mind,” Tadros said. “They don’t even know where the body is, yet they are sure that nothing is linked to the crown prince.”

Tadros said if it turns out MBS was involved in Khashoggi’s death, then Amnesty would love to see “justice go all the way to the top.”

“But the first step of course is an actual credible investigation,” Tadros said, adding that the Turkish investigation has been “highly politicized” and the way in which they’ve leaked information is “highly suspect.”

Tadros said the “best shot we have” at true justice is a “UN investigation that will be transparent, not politicized, and credible.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply troubled” after Riyadh confirmed Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, and called for a “prompt, thorough, transparent” probe into the incident.

‘There’s a war on freedom of expression, and freedom of speech, and credible journalism’

Tadros said the most “realistic” way for such an investigation to occur is for Turkey to write a letter to Guterres formally requesting a probe.

But Tadros also said both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have reasons to be against a full and independent investigation.

“At the end of the day the Saudis have clearly had a very destructive hand in the events that went on inside of that consulate,” Tadros said. “They don’t want to see a real investigation happen.”

She also said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s troubling record on press freedom might make him reluctant to set a precedent in which the UN investigates crimes against journalists on Turkish soil. But Turkey this week said it would cooperate if the UN and other international bodies call for an independent probe.

Khashoggi’s killing has “garnered so much incredible attention,” Tadros said, that she’s deeply concerned about the message sent “to dictators and leaders who attack journalists on a day by day basis if nothing happens.”

“There’s a war on freedom of expression, and freedom of speech, and credible journalism, and I think we are losing that war,” Tadros said.

SEE ALSO: Here’s everything we know about the troubling disappearance and death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi

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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/khashoggi-death-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman-mbs-charges-2018-10?r=UK&IR=T

The post Khashoggi’s brutal killing could lead to charges against Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who met Saudi King Salman in Riyadh on a flying visit to the region, said on Sunday that the United States was deeply concerned by Iran’s “destabilizing and malign activities” in the Middle East.

“Pompeo’s remarks about Iran are baseless and repetitive … As long as the legitimate governments of the regional countries need our help, Iran will remain in those countries,” Iranian state TV quoted Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Iran-says-US-Saudi-cooperation-will-destabilize-Middle-East-553097

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